I believe the only path to self-driving cars is through full-stack integration of hardware and software. Waymo doesn’t fit the bill and is progressing far too slowly, in my opinion. It’s more of a proof of concept than a serious effort. It’s great, but I don’t see a viable path forward for them that doesn’t involve their software and sensors on another manufacturer’s cars. Fine, but Google is allergic to anything not search related, and not with very good profit margins. At some point someone is going to say hey we are spending billions of dollars on this, and we have no near-term launch plans, let’s sell this thing and call it quits.
Tons of people disagree I’m sure but IMO the writing is on the wall here, it’s just a matter of time.